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S.W. is 71 years old and uses a wheelchair in the Salt Lake County Metro Jail, where he is confined.
He was booked March 21, 2014, on a shoplifting charge. More than 13 months later, he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial and was committed to the Utah State Hospital for treatment to restore him to competence.
But four months after the court's order — and after nearly a year and a half in jail — S.W. has not been admitted to the hospital. Instead, he is languishing in protective custody after complaining of abuse.
The man is identified only by his initials in a federal court lawsuit, which claims that the delays of getting people like S.W. out of county jails and into treatment has become a "crisis" in Utah.
The lawsuit was brought by the Disability Law Center and three jail inmates who allege the state is allowing some people arrested for even minor offenses but declared mentally incompetent to spend months in jail awaiting treatment — even as the law presumes they are innocent. The time in jail can exceed the sentence the person could get for minor offenses, according to the proposed class-action lawsuit.
The state hospital's wait list has doubled each year for the past three years, the lawsuit says, and the time on the list has grown from 30 days to 180 days.
"The situation faced by these inmates has now reached a state of crisis," says the complaint, which also cites the nearly fourfold increase in the number of people on the wait list, from 15 to 56 since 2013.
The Utah Department of Human Services, which oversees the state hospital, declined on Wednesday to address the allegations in the lawsuit.
The suit says people with mental illnesses are stuck without appropriate treatment in county jails, where they are frequently placed in protective custody or solitary confinement, which aggravates their mental illness.
Nationally, most states have wait times for treatment of less than 30 days, while several states have requirements that mentally incompetent inmates are transferred to a state hospital within seven days. The limit in Minnesota is 48 hours after a judicial order.
To try to address the growing demand for such mental health treatments, the Department of Human Services and the Utah State Hospital proposed four options to the state Legislature in 2014, according to Aaron M. Kinikini, legal director at the Disability Law Center.
Those included:
• Providing jail-based competency-restoration services at an estimated cost of $300,000.
• Privately contracting to provide jail-based programs for about $2 million.
• Funding a unit at the hospital for overflow patients for about $4 million.
• Adding beds and staff at a cost of about $24 million.
"The state opted for the cheapest option," Kinikini said, "From our perspective, this attempt at a 'quick fix' fails to address the underlying problem and does nothing to mitigate the fundamental constitutional issue raised when scores of incompetent criminal defendants are incarcerated for months on end without being convicted of a crime."
The lawsuit seeks class-action status for all current and future inmates in the same circumstances.
It also seeks a injunction restraining the state from further violations of constitutional rights and for the award of attorney fees and other costs.